S1 (FriAM 1-65) - The Psychonomic Society

Posters 1110–1116 Thursday Evening
(1110)
Older Adults Search Working Memory As Efficiently As Younger
Adults: Evidence From Four Different Memory Scanning Conditions.
ELKE B. LANGE & PAUL VERHAEGHEN, Georgia Institute
of Technology (sponsored by Paul Verhaeghen)—In two experiments,
we compared performance of young and old adults in a serial recognition
task. In this task the visual presentation of N digits at N locations
was followed by N recognition probes (N = 3, 4, 5). Participants
had to decide whether the probe digit occurred at the same location
as in the encoding phase. We probed items predictably (forward, backward,
a learned irregular pattern) and randomly. RT is independent of
N only when the probe recognition order matches the encoding order;
otherwise RT increased linearly with set size, with the learned irregular
probing yielding the largest slope. After logarithmic transformation
of the data and subtraction of sensorimotor RT, no age � slope
interactions were found, showing that the search efficiency of older
adults is a simple multiplicative function of that of the young.
(1111)
Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity and Other
Cognitive Abilities Influence L2 Reading Comprehension With
Missing Information. MICHAEL BUNTING, SCOTT A. WEEMS,
DIMITRIOS K. DONAVOS, ELIZABETH ROGLER, & HENK J.
HAARMANN, University of Maryland—Missing words (i.e., completeness)
and missing background information (i.e., context) can adversely
impact readability and comprehension, especially for readers
with lower language proficiency. Our objective was to identify the role
of individual differences in salient cognitive factors in L2 reading
comprehension when completeness and context vary. L2 reading comprehension
skills of 82 adult foreign-language professionals (L1: English;
L2: Spanish acquired post-critical period; lower- to upper-intermediate
L2 proficiency) were assessed in tests of narrative and
conversation comprehension, inferential reading, and reading with
spatial reasoning. Subjects made inferences about missing words,
missing context, or the spatial arrangement of items, or avoided misleading
inferences. L1 working memory (WM), L1 and L2 processing
speeds, reasoning ability, L1 reading ability, creativity, and situation
memory were assessed. Preliminary findings indicate that WM
and L1 reading ability are the strongest correlates of L2 reading comprehension
when drawing inferences is difficult.
(1112)
Domain-Specific Proactive Interference Effects Are Predicted by Impairments
in Short-Term Memory Capacity. LAURA H. F. BARDE
& MYRNA F. SCHWARTZ, Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute,
& SHARON L. THOMPSON-SCHILL, University of Pennsylvania
(sponsored by Myrna F. Schwartz)—To date, studies regarding mechanisms
of proactive interference (PI) in working memory have focused
primarily on the integrity of control processes (i.e., inhibition,
selection). In a patient study, we took an alternative approach, wherein
variation in domain-specific short-term memory (STM) capacity was
correlated with resistance to semantic or phonological PI (sPI and
pPI). Twelve patients with left hemisphere stroke performed a modified
item-recognition task (Hamilton & Martin, 2006; Monsell, 1978)
designed to elicit sPI or pPI from list items located one, two, or three
trials back. Following a z-transformation of each patient’s interference
measure, referencing an age-matched control group (n = 20), we
found domain-specific patterns of PI. That is, impairments in semantic
STM were associated with sPI, but not with pPI. The reverse effect
was found in patients with phonological maintenance deficits. We
interpret the results with regard to extant models of STM impairment
and accounts of PI resolution.
(1113)
Effects of Phonological Neighborhood Size and Biphone Frequency
on Serial Recall of Words. LINDA MORTENSEN & RANDI C.
MARTIN, Rice University—Immediate serial recall is more accurate
for lists composed of nonwords with many than with few phonologi-
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cal neighbors and for lists of nonwords with high than with low biphone
frequency (Thorn & Frankish, 2005). We investigated the independent
effects of phonological neighborhood size (Experiments 1
and 2) and biphone frequency (Experiments 3 and 4) on immediate serial
recall of high- and low-frequency words. When the lists were sampled
from a closed set of words, neighborhood size had no effect.
When the lists were from an open set, a facilitatory effect was observed
but only for low-frequency words. Biphone frequency facilitated
recall of both high- and low-frequency words in both closed and
open sets. These results confirm that phonological neighborhood effects
on recall of words exist but suggest that the effect is confined to
low-frequency words. The influence of lexical and sublexical phonological
knowledge on short-term memory for words is discussed.
(1114)
Phonological and Orthographic Similarity Affects Verbal Short-
Term Memory for Chinese Characters. CHE-YING LAI &
DENISE H. WU, National Central University, & DAISY L. HUNG
& OVID J.-L. TZENG, National Yang-Ming University (sponsored by
Ovid J.-L. Tzeng)—Prominent theories of short-term memory (STM)
emphasize the importance of phonology to retaining verbal materials,
whereas orthography is only considered supplementary when phonology
is not available or useful. However, when retaining Chinese characters,
whose correspondence between phonology and orthography is
relatively irregular in comparison with most alphabetic languages, orthographic
contribution might be more likely to express. We manipulated
the phonological and orthographic similarity between Chinese
characters independently in three experiments. The contribution of
phonology was consistently observed across three experiments, indicating
the dominant role of this kind of information in verbal STM.
More importantly, the contribution of orthography was also demonstrated
in both phonologically dissimilar and similar characters after
the strategy of focusing on other aspects of Chinese characters was
prevented. Our findings suggest that orthography is also a crucial
component of verbal STM for retaining Chinese characters, even
when the phonological information is readily available.
• IMPLICIT LEARNING AND MEMORY •
(1115)
Memory Consolidation During Rapid Serial Visual Presentation.
ANDREAS BREUER & MICHAEL E. J. MASSON, University of
Victoria, ANNA-LISA COHEN, Yeshiva University, & D. STEPHEN
LINDSAY, University of Victoria (sponsored by Michael E. J. Masson)—
It has been claimed that for a briefly viewed object to be encoded into
long-term memory, the viewing episode must undergo a process of
memory consolidation beyond the initial processing needed to identify
the object. Previous demonstrations have supported the conclusion
that memory consolidation can take several hundred milliseconds.
Contrary to this claim, we provide evidence that pictures shown
for only 75 msec in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) format
with no motivation for processing beyond immediate identification do
exhibit improved performance in an indirect test of memory (masked
object identification), even when performance is at chance in a recognition
memory test. We also determined that the memory episodes
formed from the RSVP sequences were partly perceptual, as shown
by better performance for exact replications of the studied picture relative
to mirror reversals, and partly conceptual, as shown by crossmodal
priming.
(1116)
The Role of Color in Object Memory. TOBY J. LLOYD-JONES &
KAZUYO NAKABAYASHI, University of Kent—We examined the
effects of repetition priming, object format (pictures vs. words), color
format (color patches vs. words), and color transformation between
study and test (from correctly colored to incorrectly colored and vice
versa) on colored-object decision performance (i.e., deciding whether
an object was correctly colored) using diagnostically colored objects